Revisions
by Nyah
Summary: God, or fate, or John Connor offers the chance for some lives to be lived again. AU, Born to Run and beyond. Full Ensemble. Part 6: In which Kyle steps into his brother's shoes.
1. Prologue

Rating: PG-13

Characters: Ensemble, no ship as of now

Timeline: After "Adam Raised a Cain" Departs canon from there

Summary: Because I not so secretly want it to happen… a near future in which the intricacies of multiple timelines offer the chance for some lives to be lived again.

Note: In my head this will develop as an alternate end to whatever Fox throws us as a finale to season 2.

**First**

When he entered the home of Zeira Corp's CEO he'd already been ready for the ringing in his ears. It always comes after a battle, not from the explosive percussion of hurtling rounds or the brutal hardness of the ground when you need cover and the best you can do is hit pavement. It's just the aftermath of accidentally being alive. The fecundity of the moment when you didn't die spins about, vibrating like a trapped insect in your ear canal. It sprouts new possibilities, unexpected and a little grotesque, like potatoes gone to seed under the kitchen sink.

The feeling was familiar, comforting, and disturbing. It reminded him every time that he was alive. It also reminded him that he'd been a hair's breadth from death.

This time was different. He heard shots. There was shit-all for cover.

Movement.

He raised his-

Finished.

**Between**

He thought it would be like lightning. He had seen the bright neon of the bolts skipping between the turbines. He thought he'd have a moment, thought he'd see the spark of the bolt that would stop his heart and take him to another when. He thought he'd watch the world change.

He could still see the blueness of the turbine storm around him when the new light started. It came on too fast for him to determine a source. This light was white and there was a hotness that burned his eyes without blistering his skin. He closed his eyes against the growing glare. But the light was shining under his eyelids. It was in him. It was him. He opened his mouth and breathed out explosions of light without heat. He opened his hands and the colors of the world dissolved into white radiance.

There was something pressing against his face. It bore down on his skull like a finger poking cruelly between his eyes. The thing twisted, opening space between the layers of cells, digging a place for itself in his flesh and bone. He tried to scream, horrified that it would bore its way inside him. But there was nothing in him but light and it was taking everything apart.

**And Again**

He pried into the situation with the care of a man inspecting an infected wound. He prodded softly, not sure yet how deep the damage went or how best to make it better. The flood of news reports that had once clogged all media venues, choking out everything but serious sports coverage and news of the recession receded to an ebb with a speed that startlingly contrasted the terrified buzz that had so recently surrounded the Connor family. Reports now were just taglines rattled out breathlessly at the ends of the latest reports about the First Lady's fashion choices. The fugitive terrorist was being moved to such and such a place for questioning. Oh, and let's take special care to remember that she's female folks. Sarah Connor's gender was keeping her in the news far longer than bullets and police brigades ever could. He'd memorized every detail of the clip that always accompanied the reports. He traced the lines of Sarah Connor's face as it was brutally smashed against asphalts like his brother had traced the lines of a faded Polaroid. He thought of the little talismans tunnel trolls carried for luck- little bits of scrap material etched with lines that suggested a female face. St. Sarah, patron of the soon to be dead. That face had burned its way into the public eye but it had been written between the folds of his cerebrum and carved onto his bones years ago. Sarah Connor was hope. But not yet.

The manhunt was still on, bright-eyed, over made-up newscasters reminded the public. At least one gunman was thought to still be at large. The only other person involved in the shoot out was an unidentified male DOA that had since been interred at the expense of the state.

Images of the dead gunman were not released to the public due to their graphic nature. It was unclear as to whether he had been pursuing or aiding the Connors.

It didn't matter, with Sarah Connor in prison and John Connor vanished into exile a dead gunman was the least of his worries.

"My ID had been flagged at the Mexican border. When shit hits the fan, I'll run north. Find me in Canada." Connor had said and he'd tried to imagine the general without his scarred face, tried to imagine him as a kid running scarred instead of the magnificent bastard of a thousand battles.

"With all due respect sir, is that the most you can give me? North?"

"We'll need new IDs, weapons, a full work up." Connor had made him memorize a list of contacts with the precaution that not all might be trustworthy, not all might be alive. He'd provided him with codes to bank vaults and made him memorize layouts and security systems. "My mother will have just been arrested. I'll stop running too soon. I'll make plans to go back for her. Get to me first."

"Sir, if this is your past," he felt a headache building somewhere between his eyebrows and his sanity, "can't you tell me where it is I'll meet you? Can't you tell me what to do next?" He didn't like to sound so helpless in front of the General but, he reminded himself, this was far outside the scope of any mission he'd ever completed. John Connor. Time travel. Damn.

"No I can't Lieutenant." Did Connor almost grin? Did he almost look ill? "The past I remember is the one that lead to this present. The objective is to change that past. The objective is for you to change that past."

"And, sir, my brother?" He'd tried to hold back mention of his brother. When he thought of him, he began to shake with fury and grieve. Connor prized level-headedness. Connor prized logic.

"This is for him too, Lieutenant. You're going back to change things, maybe change our lives for good his time."

He nodded.

"And Lieutenant," Connor had said, "keep your head down. You're high profile. Your prints are in the system."

He'd wondered at that. He'd never been arrested in his life. He wondered at it still as he kept his eye on the news and cautiously made contact with the first of the people on the list in his had. Weapon's dealers. Fake paper guys. One of them seemed to recognize him. The man paled the day they met in person and said, "You bad, man." The guy gave him a great price.

He kept his head down and made his way north. Somewhere up there was John Connor who didn't know he was expecting him.


	2. James

**Rating:** PG-13

**Characters:** Ensemble, no ship as of now though future ships may sail

**Timeline:** After "Adam Raised a Cain." This bit and the next few will incorporate bits and pieces from "Born to Run." We'll call it cafeteria canon-ness. Also, I think I'll pull a T-verse and set the date for the date of posting. So this installment takes place on April 12, 2009.

**Chapter Summary:** Fr. Bonilla's visit revised.

April 12, 2009

"I'm here to see Sarah Connor."

James didn't even look up from the thick file he was reading. A whole slew of people had been appearing over the days since Sarah Connor's arrest. Some of them were former neighbors, formers lovers, former accomplices, or former friends of some woman with Sarah Different-Last-Name-Same-Face. Some were just crazies. It didn't matter, mocked her face as it stared up at him from its manila bindings, she wouldn't see any of them.

"Fr. Armando Bonilla?" Paul Auldridge said skeptically.

James had spoken to the priest on the phone and unless the accent was an affectation…. He turned around sharply and caught the eye of the dead man wearing a priest's collar and standing in the prison lobby. He had loosened this man's handcuffs in this very prison, knowing the man wasn't his serial killer but that he carried enough guilt like Cain, plain as day on his forehead, to fit the bill. He'd prayed over his body, asking forgiveness for both of them, moments before it had been lowered into the incinerator. No one had found it odd that James had paid his respects to the corpse who had once been his final case. The case had been devastating and he had a reputation as a religious man. But quite a few people might find it odd that he was in a room with that waking, talking corpse right now.

"Not Fr. Bonilla," He said before false priest could speak.

Agent Auldridge's neck jerked in a predatory gesture of suspicion.

"I'm Fr. Peter Tilden," said John Doe, Derek No-Last-Name-Given. "I…"

"I asked Fr. Tilden to come in to honor Sarah Connor's request for a priest," James lied before Derek could.

"She asked for a Fr. Armando Bonilla," Auldridge replied with the confidence of man who didn't need to write down a name to remember it.

James grimaced. "I talked to Fr. Bonilla. He and Sarah Connor have met before… he was reluctant to encounter her again. I asked Fr. Tilden to hear her Confession." The best lies were the bastard brothers of truth. Fr. Bonilla had been more than a little dismayed when he heard that the fugitive who'd invaded his church wanted to speak with him. But he'd agreed so long as he could take a little time first to pray.

"Her Confession?" Auldridge's eyebrows climbed for his hairline in mock surprise and genuine frustration. "I've spent a solid twenty-four hours with that woman. I don't think a priest is what it's going to take to get a confession out of her." He rounded on the priest in question. "Isn't part of what you guys do to hear the Confession of anyone who wants to get it off their chest?"

Derek's shoulders raised in perfect mimicry of martyrdom as if to say, "I wish I could bear the burden of responsibility for the unfeelingness of my fellowman." The gesture was quickly replaced by a pose of anxious concern. "I was under the impression that Ms. Connor had requested a priest." He drummed his fingers nervously against the small leather case he carried. Ellison recognized it as one of the cases priests carry to bring the Eucharist to shut-ins. "I cannot, in good conscience, hear a Confession that comes under coercion."

"There's been no _coercion_ here, Father," Auldridge said, straightening the sleeves of his already crisp suit. Derek's act had snared him flawlessly. James wasn't surprised, the man was ghostly pale and sweat had beaded on his clean-shaven upper lip. He looked for all the world like a young priest who hadn't had much experience with prisons or inmates. But James would bet his salary that Fr. John Doe had some ink under that cassock that said different.

"We'll be happy to grant Ms. Connor's request for a priest but you're going to have to leave the luggage outside."

"It's the Sacrament…." Derek fumbled the case open revealing a neat row of hosts and stoppered bottles of wine and water.

"The liquid stays," Auldridge said.

Derek nodded. "The Body of Christ will be sufficient."

"I'll show you in." Auldridge said. "Sarah Connor's a paranoid schizophrenic. Don't expect much of a welcome…."

If Derek replied his voice was lost behind the thick pane of the door that shut behind the two men. James glanced at the security feed on the monitor behind the lobby's desk. Derek looked paler yet against the white linoleum of the floor like he'd never seen sunlight. The feed ended when they reached the interrogation room Sarah Connor had occupied for the better part of the afternoon. The video would continue on a monitor outside the room but with the sound feed absent. They'd keep an eye on Fr. Tilden, for his own safety, but ears were another matter.

James stepped out of the front doors of L.A. County Detention Center to make a call. It wouldn't do to have Fr. Bonilla regain his courage in the middle of another priest conducting the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

When he finished he took up a place in a chair in the lobby. The chair looked like it might have been rescued from a condemned bus station. It had certainly been designed before human beings had a thorough vision of the shape of the spine, much less how to keep it comfortable. He sat as one hour slipped by and paced through another. Fr. Tilden would need a ride back to the parsonage when he finished. Besides James had questions of a spiritual nature for the priest, specifically about the nature of good and evil and the resurrection of the dead.


	3. Sarah

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**Note**: Special thanks to **Lora Perry** for going out of the way to make sure I received her really helpful feedback.

Her body told her it's just after noon when the door opened again. She hadn't seen sunlight in a few days but her internal clock had consolidated its ticks against cinderblock walls and psychotropic drugs in Pescadero. A few fluorescent light bulbs couldn't fool it. "You've got a visitor Ms. Connor," Auldridge's voice rang out from the amorphous shadow in the doorway.

She folded her hands neatly on the table and rehearsed her plea to Fr. Bonilla. A shadow separated itself from the dark patch that was Auldridge and resolved into a shape Sarah knew. She watched the image grow larger and wondered if Judgment had already happened and if this silhouette had been burned into her retina by the light of a dying planet, a grotesque nuclear photograph. She watched the shape so intently, waiting to see if it would be followed by Charley Dixon and Riley Dawson, Andy Goode and Miles Dyson. And with his brother at the vanguard, would Kyle Reese bring up the rear? She watched him with such intensity that the sound of his voice caught her unawares. "Thank you, Agent Auldridge."

Sarah should have been surprised like she should have known not to trust James Ellison, like she should have known how to keep her boy safe. But all the surprise she had been allotted was used up. Calm was all she had left. Calm, a feeling she'd faked so often that the reality of it was like an unexpected taste in her mouth, wine when you're expecting water. "Fraternizing with my demons Agent Auldridge?" She called. "That's a bit unprofessional, don't you think?"

She threw her head back, letting the metal back of the chair dig into her neck. She didn't remember falling asleep but that didn't mean much. "Sodium Pentothal or did I lose a lot more blood than I remember?"

Derek approached her slowly, wide-eyed, cautious. Why was she imagining him this way? Maybe it was because he didn't have a gun in his hand.

"Sarah Connor? My name is Fr. Peter Tilden-"

"Where's your brother? This is his M.O."

"I was told you requested the sacraments." Derek's face had been scraped clean of its ever-present shadow of stubble and a priest's cassock nearly covered all evidence of his tattoos.

"What is this?" Sarah felt a laugh bark its way from her throat, shoring up the dam against impending sobs. "Do you win if I go mad?"

"I was also told that you're sick." Derek looked uncertain. She laughed again. She laughed at Derek's hairless chin. She laughed at his priest's collar. She laughed at the fact that she was being haunted by the Reese boys because two were dead and she'd failed the only one left.

"I want to see the priest. Fr, Bonilla." Sarah turned and directed her request at the camera in the corner because she didn't trust the apparition to deliver her message. "I want to see Fr. Bonilla!"

"Ms. Connor… Sarah, I am a priest. I'm the one they sent." The shade of Derek Reese was staring at her hard. He'd shed some of the furtiveness he'd worn in the door. "I'm the one he sent."

Derek took her hands across the table as if to offer comfort. But when his fingers closed around hers she careened away from the table, backing away as far as the cuffs on her ankles allowed. Her skin was crawling. "I don't know what you're trying to pull you metal bastard. Derek Reese is dead. Go on and kill me. I won't tell you anything." Priestly vestments were one thing but Derek wouldn't have touched her, not even a Derek who lived only in her sleep-deprived mind. The apparition before her had not been crafted by hallucinogens and hysteria. It was the Devil stitched into flesh.

The thing with Derek's face tried to find an appropriate expression. She wondered when it would start trying to find a gun. "I'm not sure what…." Sarah stared coldly into its eyes. They were logical things weren't they? Let it see the illogic of lying to her, of trying to use her for its purposes.

The machine's eyes narrowed. Then its whole demeanor seemed to change, seemed to twist itself into a shape she almost recognized. There was death in his eyes but not because he lacked a soul, only because his soul had been eaten around the edges, dissolved in the acid of a lifelong war. "I'm not metal," he said coldly and at the same time Sarah said, "Reese?"

The timidity had left his posture. The piety had gone out of his gestures. His fingers wrapped around the handle of a small black case and she half expected it to become a gun under the force of his will. But there was still something of the confusion in his lowered brows.

"Fr. Peter Tilden," he maintained but the pieces of the priest he'd so carefully assembled had fled from his joints and tendons, only the soldier was left.

"The last time I was shot you came to get me. There was a woman. A doctor. She held a gun on you. What was her name?"

"Sit down and try not to look so hostile," Derek replied sharply. "You're Confessing."

"I'm crazy. Remember?" Sarah stayed where she was. "What was her name?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Derek said flatly. Strike one.

"There's a scar on your chest. Bullet wound. Near your heart. How'd you get it?"

The muscles in his jaw clenched so that the contours on his face became sharp. The expression was so like her son's. "I don't know who you think I am but I was sent here by John Connor-"

"How. Did. You. Get. It?" Whoever he was, he wasn't metal. He was fighting confusion. He was fighting to keep his temper in check.

"Look Connor, I've got a lot of holes in me but none near my heart made by bullets. Where I'm from- you dig yourself a hole like that, you don't step out again." His tone was measured and even. It stood in a bizarre contrast to his words. He crossed himself for the boys on the other side of the camera lens.

"Show me," she challenged.

Derek was silent a moment, nodding as if she'd said something he needed to ponder, something that weighed on his soul. "I'm the priest," he said quietly. "You are confessing. So sit your ass down because I've got the impression that if my cover gets blown I'm not walking out of here."

This time Sarah did as she was told. She sat and looked him in the eye. "Derek Reese died five days ago. People tend not to see things they don't expect to see. As long as you're wearing that face, no one's looking for you." The ponderous expression returned but Sarah thought it might be genuine this time. "Who is my son's father?"

"Only Connor knows that," he replied distractedly then tilted his head to allow that she herself might have some idea.

It wasn't quite strike three. She thought the Derek Reese she'd known knew the answer but she'd never seen sure, that was one confession he'd refused to hear. "Yes. John Connor. My son. He sent you."

Derek nodded, though it hadn't been a question.

"From when?"

"2027."

"When specifically? Where was your brother?"

"My _brother_? Kyle?" Derek glanced to the side and Sarah knew he could see his reflection in the double-walled glass of the observation window that pretended to be a mirror on this side. She wondered if he might be seeing himself as she saw him- as an imperfect copy of himself, counterfeit, a fake given away by smudged ink, by a missing water mark. "He's with my unit. He'll assume command unless Connor pulls him for another black bagger."

"Your team- they didn't come back with you… Sayles…?" It had been two years and Sarah had never paid much attention to the names of the dead men from the safe house.

"No. We had just pulled out of a remote bunker that was under fire. Patchy retreat. My team didn't have time to regroup before Connor sent for me."

Sarah swallowed. There might be a few days, a brother's death, or a whole lifetime between them but this version of Derek Reese was alive and that, she supposed, was the difference that counted. "He gave you a mission. So what's next?"

"We pray."

"Pray?"

This time Sarah let him take her hands. He bowed his head and she followed suit thinking he wanted to shield the sight of their conversation from eyes more concerned with punishing her crimes than upholding their laws. But then he did the last things she expected: he began to pray. "Everlasting King, Thy will for our salvation is full of power. Thy right arm controls the whole course of human life. We give Thee thanks for all Thy mercies, seen and unseen. For eternal life, for the heavenly joys of the Kingdom which is to be…."

The prayer went on for some time and it was some time before Sarah realized that the rhythmic twitchings of his fingertips against her palms were something more than a tick of this new Derek. _John is north. Where, _they tapped in precise Morse Code.

_Canada_, she replied in kind.

"…Waters like boundless mirrors, reflecting the sun's golden rays and the scudding clouds. All nature murmurs mysteriously…."

_Where._

"No one can put together what has crumbled into dust, but Thou canst restore a conscience turned to ashes. Thou canst restore to its former beauty a soul lost and without hope."

Sarah hesitated for the space of a missed dash. Derek had lived under her roof for over a year and she never brought herself to trust him…. _Peace Arch Park._

"Across the cold chains of the centuries, I feel the warmth of Thy breath, I feel Thy blood pulsing in my veins. Part of time has already gone, but now Thou art the present. Amen."

"Amen."

"Do you have any prayer requests to be offered up at Mass?"

She was ready to play the part now. "Yes. Please pray for my son who is dead," she said. "If John were alive, nothing would stop him from coming to me. He'd try to take down the prison himself. FBI, SWAT, it wouldn't matter how dangerous it would be for him. He would come. I'm all he's got…."

As she looked at Derek across the unadorned steel table he seemed to change again. His monochromatic clothes took on a new shade. Stubble darkened his features. They changed places at the table. As the memory surfaced her stomach clenched exactly like it had the moment she realized who the man before her was and who he was to her. She looked at her hands, remembering how she'd held him up as the blood pumped rhythmically from the wound in his chest.

Back then she'd hoped so much that he was someone else. Not Kyle. She'd never let herself think he might be much like his brother. But she'd still wanted something more than he had to give. She'd wanted someone to trust, someone who was family. But Derek Reese had been a junkyard dog, half-mad with rage, who snapped at any hand that tried to pet him and tore the throat from anyone who looked at his master askance. But she never quite knew who that master was. John? Derek himself? Humanity?

She looked at him now, their roles reversed, and thought maybe she'd been just as disappointing. Maybe if she'd given him a place in their lives to fill he would have filled it. Maybe if she hadn't distrusted him all the time he wouldn't have given her a reason to do so. She gritted her teeth for a moment around the decision at hand and had to take a breath before parting her jaw so the secret could slip through.

But when she spoke, it wasn't the secret she'd intended, it wasn't that they were family. "And it would all be a waste because I can't stay with him. I'm sick. Or, I will be soon. Cancer." Sarah nodded to herself, confirming that this was the secret that could help him even if it wasn't the one that cleared her conscience. "So pray for my son because he was always braver than was good for him."

Derek nodded. He opened the case he'd brought with him.

"This has to be a sin."

Derek raised an eyebrow. "Catholic?" He said, meaning, "Do you care?"

"Retired."

"Good. You can correct me if I mess it up."

"First Communion, Father?"

He nodded but offered, "Done a few baptisms."

Derek mouthed some words that resembled the sentiment of the sacrament in question (as far as Sarah remembered anyway) while Fr. Tilden went through the motions for the boys outside with a similar amount of accuracy. When he finished he placed a round of pale white host in Sarah's cupped palms. "The Body of Christ."

"Amen." The wafer stuck to the roof of Sarah's mouth and she wondered if her own son would someday be remembered in something that tasted like pressed cardboard.

Before he left, Derek took her hands once more. "I'll pray for you Sarah Connor," he said but she didn't know him well enough to know who was speaking just then.

To his retreating back she said. "You know that's not very priestly of you, Father."

"What's that?" He said, turning half around.

"To be thinking that I'm prettier than my picture."

His hint of a smile wasn't quite priestly either. "Well then maybe you should pray for me too."

End part 3


	4. History Lesson

Disclaimer: See part 1

Note: Bear with me. I promise this part will be relevant to the rest. And the next bit should be up very shortly.

**March 2027 **

A piece of itself had risen up again to take on the image of the enemy. It looked at itself through the lenses of eyes that, a moment ago, had been nothing but ions lost in a sea of metal molecules, held together only by the tenuous connections of dipole moments. But these ions were something new, a memetic descendant of living cells. Each would make up the tiniest fraction of a form. Each on its own was thoroughly dispensable for it existed a billion times over and could be replaced without the form, let alone the universe, taking notice. But together they could create a form that functioned in capacities that far exceeded the abilities of the individual parts. And unlike their ancestral cells, the mimetic ions could adapt instantaneously, taking on more advantageous shapes. Their modification was not tied to tedious eons of accidental evolution.

It looked down at itself and tried one of the shapes in its memory. Its figure appeared human but a human with these exact specifications had never existed. It was tall and large, even for a male specimen. Its shoulders were broad and cords of muscles were woven about its arms, legs, and torso. Its appearance was meant to intimidate, to warn off the humans who didn't know yet to fear the Infiltrators.

The simulacrum pressed a finger into its abdomen. The finger disappeared to the first joint. The body was less than solid, its parts had to sacrifice density for volume. It was too small for this shape.

It relinquished the shape and flowed freely about the landscape, imposing no form on its molecules. It flowed out of the vat in which it had been born. It flowed over flotsam and jetsam and pieces of itself. It flowed into a box, a packing crate, and the lid was closed over it. There was little data to be gleaned from the box and the data seldom changed. It didn't matter, for now it was still Itself. It existed in a million locations: in circuitry, in databases, in massive hard drives, in tiny chips, in defense grids, in Infiltrators, and in Exterminators.

The box was placed in a ship while It grew into hundreds of new bytes every second. The ship was intercepted by a submarine while It created itself in new bodies. The box was handed over to the enemy. Through a remote pair of eyes on the edge of Its neural network It watched the part of Itself get carried away by a humans who identified themselves as parts of the enemy.

The submarine descended. The earth turned. The carbon balance teetered and shifted. Unearthed deposits pressed themselves into the air. They would later be bound up in the cells of growing things but to slowly. Too slowly.

_Deeper._ Molecules of ozone burst apart and ultraviolet light leeched color and life from the planet.

_Deeper. _Molds and bacteria digested burnt wood, broken bones, and other dead things.

_Deeper._

Darkness.

It had been here before. This was death.

Time passed. The data changed. It was still in the box. It was still descending. It still had an objective. But everything else had changed. Perhaps the world still existed outside the box. But It had no data, no way to measure change or variance.

It was not what It used to be. It was the only change in the data. It was in darkness. It was contained. It was nowhere but inside a box. It was alone with the objective.

Then someone opened the box.

&&

**September 2008**

&&

When It broke the rules of time, Its first action was to be born into a dead woman's skin.

Walking into the dead woman's life would require more data.

&&

There was a glass tank in her office. It had a volume of precisely 25.276 gallons but held only 23.745 gallons of water. The water was kept pH neutral by a filtering system. There were colored bits of rock and synthetic polymer in the bottom of the tank. More synthetic polymers mimicked tropical corals. Seven aquatic vertebrates indigenous to Indonesia lived in the water.

A pulse of data ran through her body like a sound wave. The molecules rippled, pushing the information along as quickly as the transfer of electricity. The wave coalesced at the region of her body that had taken on the image of a boot-clad foot. The boot swelled, elongating then budding. The bud pinched in, finally severing itself from the foot. The new shape was long and pale, living flesh the color of the dead. Its body was ungainly, it was thick and damp and lacked prehensile appendages.

The new body lost its form for a moment and became, once again, something like mercury but more like the sun's plasma. It flowed into the tank and the fish stirred the water in agitation. The long, white body emerged again.

It lay, unmoving, on the bottom of the tank. Its black eyes were blank as buttons or the spaces betweens stars. She touched the glass and wondered what it saw.


	5. Interlude

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**Note:** I've no particular familiarity with the Canada Border Services Agency nor with Canadian dialect. I apologize in advance for errors in facts or slang.

April 2009

I knew the guy wanted something the second he Parked himself on the stool next to mine. There was a pretty young thing, a little down in the mouth, occupying a table in the corner; there was a pair of lovelies, friendly and smiling, a few stools down; and plenty of empty stools and tables besides.

So when the guy pulled on up next to me I started makin' a list of all the things he might get on about. I'd been into McGuirk's twice already this week and that was gettin' to be the pattern. Maybe I was startin' to put on the look of a professional drinker and was attractin' similar company. Still, if I was in the process of building a beer gut, the notches on my belt hadn't given it away yet and Tisha hadn't complained a word. As far as I could tell I still cut a pretty impressive figure.

At first glance the guy didn't appear to be one of the boys that seemed to especially like the look of a man in uniform. There was a roughness around his edges. He wasn't pretty like the fellows that had tried to cozy up to me a time of two before I straightened them out about the way of things.

He could be another small time low-life looking to grease my palms. Maybe some buddy of his had told him I looked the other way a time or two about plants and fruit crossing the border and he wanted to see how far I'd toe the line if there was a little cash cushion on the other side. Maybe he just figured a guy who'd sit at a bar in uniform couldn't have too big a hard on about the rules.

Oh yeah, he'd definitely taken note of the uniform. A savage little part of me gleefully anticipated the part when I'd get to watch him squirm at the suggestion that he just might get locked up for trying to bribe an officer of the CBSA.

"You goin' up?" I asked to save the time it would take the guy to begin conversation.

"Up?" He replied. "North? Not if I don't have to." American. For some reason I'd expected him to be from somewhere farther off, somewhere with people and concerns that were less… domestic.

"What part of the "States you from?" He hadn't exactly given the answer I was expecting. New line of questioning.

"Los Angeles." He said, then, "How's the house brew?"

I shrugged the indifference I felt. "On tap."

He raised a hand to conjure up his own pint but I caught Jimmy's attention first and waved two more drafts our way. "You're visitin'," I explained. "Have one on me." The guy inclined his head in thanks and I realized I must be feelin' mean.

I spent the pint watching one basketball team thrash another and waiting for the guy to make his opening. When the game cut out to commercial I expected the questions to start but the guy stared at the tube right on through, sipping his beer. At the next break he looked up long enough to toast the pint, his second, my fourth that he must've bought in the thick of the action. "Dan Gardner," he said. "Thanks for round one."

"Jim Tamben," I replied.

"What's that then… _Officer _Tamben?" He indicated my uniform with a nod of his head.

At least he wasn't going to hedge too much. "Yeah. But one more of these and I'll let you call me 'Jim.'"

As it turned out, I bought the next round and he bought the one after that. "So what brings you up to border country, Lieutenant?" Turned out Gardner was U.S. Army on-leave, three tours under his belt. I found I was gettin' a kick out of the title.

Gardner looked past me to newscaster talking about the latest golf Open and drained what remained out of his pint. He was startin' to look a little bleary eyed but I myself couldn't be much neater around the edges. "My son," he replied. "He, ugh, he took off with his girlfriend yesterday. Her father didn't want her seeing him. Seventeen years old - he thinks he wants to marry her."

"Livin' on a prayer and all that?"

"Yeah, well, a goddam prayer's all that boy's gonna have when I get a hold of 'em." We exchanged a derisive chuckle over the foolishness of youth and over the fact that we were both too young to be sounding so much like our fathers.

"So you think they're runnin' for the border?" It was plain the guy cared about his kid. And from the looks of him- he looked about my age- he'd probably gotten into some shit in his time to have a seventeen-year-old son.

He nodded. "John's mom, my ex-wife… she found some text messages… he, ugh, forgot his phone in the house." One of use must have ordered another round because Gardner was nursing a new pint. "She, you know, she's tellin' me this is my fault. I wasn't around enough to teach him to be a man so now he's trying to prove himself to me or some bullshit like that." He took a swallow and paused a moment. "I gotta be honest Jim, I sat down over here 'cause of John," he said, nodding once again at my uniform. "Figured I'd see if there was anyway you and your boys might help me out. He's a dumb kid but, ugh…."

I shrugged. "You'd rather it be you that teaches him so than the cops."

"Yeah."

I took a long breath in, enjoying this little show of power just a little more than I should maybe. "John Gardner is it?" He nodded once. "You wait around my station at Peace Arch tomorrow, I don't see why my boys can't keep an eye out. Minors can't cross without parental permission anyway."

Gardner grinned in thanks- an expression I didn't think that kid of his would be seein' for quite some time. "One more thing," he said. "His girl had her 18th birthday last month… any chance this'll stick to her record somehow?"

"Nah," I said and winked. "They're not crossin,' right? No reason for me even to remember they were there."

&&

The boy looked angry and frightened. The anger was easy to figure out- my boys had waylaid him and his girl as they tried to cross into Canada. But the fear- I could have sworn it was directed her. I remembered bein' seventeen. Maybe John Gardner was just afraid his break for freedom was gonna get her into trouble. Which it would. But it was almost like John was afraid _of _her. His hand on her shoulder seemed to be holding a little too tightly to the fabric of her shirt.

The girl- well, I could see why the boy might think it was a good idea to run off and marry this one. She was prettier than most pictures and polite as hell.

From behind the desk I had a good view out the glass door of the station. I'd called the number Gardner gave me a few minutes ago and I could see him crossing the parking lot now. The girl must have been able to see out as well because as Gardner entered she put her hand on John's chest, but he was on his feet the second the door opened. His expression began with horror, his eyes going white just like a deer at the scents of blood and powder.

The girl said something too quiet for me too hear and put an arm around his waste. It almost looked like she was restraining him. The boy still looked ready to bolt. The girl spoke again. The boy stood his ground for a beat then seemed to go slack. He looked like he was about to hit the floor. "Derek?" The boy said in disbelief, staring at his father. "Is that really you?"

"Don't give me that," Gardner replied but with less venom than I'd expected. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe there was something to his ex's accusations. Not really my business. "Your mother's worried sick that you'll do something stupid. _Stupider_."

"Derek?" John said again and the boy looked close to tears.

"Just get in the truck," Gardner said wearily. He looked a little shell-shocked, like he wasn't sure what to do with his son now that he'd found him. "You too." He said to the girl. "And call your father, tell him you're alright."

"Can't thank you enough Jim," Gardner said gravely as he followed his boy out, hand on his shoulder. I wondered if the kid could already tell just how short the leash was gonna get.

"Don't mention it."

I watched them walk off across the parking lot. John tried several times to stop and turn back toward his father but Gardner pushed him on with that hand on the shoulder. I chuckled to myself. I could just hear the Lieutenant sayin,' "Keep marchin' boy."

I'd tell Tisha this story tonight after she put the flowers I'd buy here in a vase. I'd helped out a guy and his family, no fuss necessary. She'd like that. Good thing too. She'd been mad as hell when I'd showed up at home, slurrin' and singin,' past midnight.

.

End part 5


	6. Derek

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**Note: **I had a lot of trouble establishing a voice that rang true for this timeline's Derek thus this part may get taken down, scrambled and posted again.

The road was wide and open, vanishing ahead in the bright sunlight like a first attempt at perspective drawing. The truck was old but it had a new car smell, at least, Derek thought it did. He could smell the earthy tang of leather that came off the steering wheel, worn to fit the palms of the truck's former, legal, owner. There was a piney smell about the truck too, like maybe the guy who owned it had been in the habit of hauling around woodchips. There were food stains here and there and water damage to the floor mats. The cabin smelled like someone else's life. He could say the same for himself.

_"What are my orders, sir?" Derek had asked two weeks ago, in the future._

_"Teach me what you know. Try to keep me safe."_

_"That's all, sir?" He asked of the man who was more than ten years his junior. _

_"Protect my mother. Protect Sarah. I'm not sending you to me, I'll already have someone watching out for me, I'm sending you to her." Connor drew a breath. "You take your orders from her. It won't be easy. She's spent her life preparing for a war she knows almost nothing about. She has her own way of doing things. Help her, tell her what you know but whatever she asks of you, you do it Reese."_

_"Yes, sir."_

_"Whatever she asks, Reese."_

"Derek," The boy, John Connor, finally spoke. "What are you…doing...?"

"Doing here?" Derek finished for John who seemed to have been struggling over one combination of words or the other for the past three miles.

"Uh…yeah?" John said and Derek heard the years falling off the familiar voice. "I was gonna say 'alive' but yeah…here."

John Connor hadn't been the first person to tell him he was a dead man. "You sent me. Almost twenty years from now. You sent me back to-"

"To wait for me and my mom and keep us safe until Judgment Day." John had been staring at him with a kind of furious intensity like figuring him out might be a matter of perseverance and strategy. But now the boy looked away, out at the passing North American landscape. "Yeah we did that part already. You died."

"So I've been told."

Sarah Connor had told him a few days ago. There had been so many things in his conversation with Connor's mother to distract him from the task at hand not the least of which was the fact that the living legend before him knew him as a ghost. She knew him and she seemed to know a shadow of his brother as well, a shadow cast by the light of a past that never happened.

Then Ellison had waited for him outside of L.A. County Detention center to tell him again. Derek might not know James Ellison but he knew men like him, men who saw miracles because they looked for them, men who tried to fit life between the pages of a holy book. The part of Lazarus was not one Derek was ready to play. He wasn't resurrected. He hadn't been reborn. For the first time in years his mouth didn't taste like ashes. He didn't feel like he was back from the dead, he felt like the world was.

Still, Ellison's faith might help them. It might cause the hesitation in a trigger finger that meant life. "What's that verse in the Bible? God tells some king he's got plans for him…?"

Ellison gripped the wheel, his face unreadable. Maybe he'd buy in, maybe he'd call Derek's bluff. Finally he spoke, " 'I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for peace and not for evil, to give you hope and a future.'"

"Yeah," Derek said. "That's the one."

"It's from a letter to the exiled people of Jerusalem from the prophet Jeremiah."

"That verse," Derek replied, "it doesn't say what God's plans are right? It just says they're for something better."

Ellison nodded.

"Well maybe God never knew either then, because the world I'm from is fucked. But John Connor has a plan." _Whatever she asks, you do it Reese. _

"John Connor?" The name sounded familiar coming out of Ellison's mouth. "And what is John Connor's plan."

"Me."

"You? Isn't the boy supposed to 'save the world'?" For as much as he thumped a Bible James Ellison talked about salvation of the world with a heavy note of skepticism. "What's a man like you gonna do for John Connor?"

_I'm going to scare him. I'm going to train him. I'm going to make him just like me._

Derek could see John's head snap back out of the corner of his eye and that was all it took to bring him to the present. "My mom? You talked to her? What'd she say?"

Derek paused. The John Connor he knew was quicksilver tempered cold logic. He tried to remember the kid he'd known once, the one he'd met that day in a section of collapsing tunnel. The boy who'd fallen from the sky but neglected to crush the witch.

A week ago he would have been unable to remember what that John looked like but now he, John the boy, sat in the seat next to him. "She agreed with you. She wants you safe and nowhere near her or that prison."

"If you know _me_ in the future you should know I don't give a damn about what anyone wants."

John had taken a risk there and they both knew it. John had never met his future self but Derek was starting to think that kid must've run across a few people that had. He'd made an eerily accurate prediction of who he would be, except.... "I met you in another life, John, but even then you worshipped Sarah Connor." Even now the name made the hair on the back of his neck prickle. Men prayed her name into the dark and hurtled it through the air with their bullets and grenades.

"_Worshipped_?" It lingered on their lips as they lay dying, memories of their own mothers long since faded.

"Yeah, worshipped. My brother learned that from you. We all learned that from you. You give a hell of a lot more than a damn."

"She's my mother," John said but his voice was a little less steady, it clung to the argument a little more desperately. "They think she killed people. They think she kidnapped Savannah Weaver. She…."

"She's Sarah Connor. She'll take care of herself." Derek said and wondered how long it would be before John tried to run. Derek had come across dozens of kids in the tunnels, orphans of the bombs or the starvation and sickness that followed. The resistance fighters started calling them the Lost Boys. Kids would turn up, silent, half-feral, their memories chased away by years of terror. The fighters would call them Peter Pan , John, Michael, Wendy Darling because if the kids had names of their own they'd forgotten them long ago. They ate, they slept, and then they ran.

But this kid was different. He might look like another John Darling but the bombs hadn't dropped yet and if he broke before the war did, they were finished. "We'll lay low for a few days," Derek said. "Your mug is still showing up on the evening news now and then. If those border cops catch it they might put two and two together but they won't guess where you're going next."

"And where's that?" John said in a clipped tone.

"Yosemite." Derek said. "Not a lot of people watching TV there."

John sat in an angry, brooding silence. He didn't speak for hours, didn't fiddle with the radio dial, didn't move at all. The only person Derek had seen match John stubborn glower was a ten-year-old Kyle, angry about being left behind while his brother went to war. If the passing landscape hadn't been so utterly different from the scorched earth and rank tunnels Derek might have forgotten who sat beside him.

But as things were, Derek barely noticed the sullen boy. His mind was trying to run through lists of contacts, and safe houses, and leads, but the blue of the sky kept trying to swallow him up. He'd convinced himself, in the years after Judgment, that the world couldn't have been like he remembered. The pictures he had in his head must be postcard images of a duller world. They were retouched by nostalgia, made Technicolor by longing.

He'd been wrong. The Washington sky was cloudless and deepest blue. Derek looked at it and thought he must have spent the last fifteen years condensing the rainbow between charcoal gray and mud brown.

Then, without provocation, John spoke. "So I guess you didn't come back with any messages or anything, huh? Like, 'John Connor, whatever you do, don't cut the red wire.'"

Derek laughed then thought of the words that would be cut into rocks, into sheet metal, into the earth itself. Fighters would trace them over and over again, deepening the letters with sharp bits of metal and sympathy. _Alone. Abandoned. Forsaken. _Derek shook his head.

When the silence was broken again, Derek did it himself. "What's with Toto?" He said, jerking his head toward the expressionless face of the machine visible in the rear view mirror. Those eyes had known him twice before. Once when he had been someone else and once when she had been. "You know those things will follow you around for months and then one day just turn and rip your throat out."

&&&

Everything here worked. Everyone here was alive. Derek sat in the cabin in the woods, cleaning the guns and listening for explosions but he only heard the rustle and creak of trees in the wind.

"We need to get moving. She doesn't have a lot of time." Four days in the middle of nowhere didn't seem to have softened John's resolve in the slightest. _Try to keep me safe, _Connor had said. Here John Connor wasn't the General yet. Here he was a living boy with a dying mother.

"You're mom killed people." Derek said. "They'll want to give her the needle. That takes years." He looked down a barrel to check the sight. "As long as you don't do it in Texas."

"She doesn't have years," The machine, 'Cameron' John called it, put in. Derek didn't like metal as a rule. _I'll already have someone watching out for me. _

"She's sick," John said grudgingly and he saw Kyle once again, fighting back tears as the world burned around him.

"I know." Derek said. He lead men future, ordered them toward their deaths or next battle, whichever came first. Part of that was knowing what drove them, knowing why each and every one of his soldiers was willing to die. If a man had a strong enough conviction, he couldn't be dissuaded from action but he could be directed. _Whatever she asks of you, you do it._ There was no mistaking Sarah Connor's intentions as she prayed for a son that wasn't dead. _Whatever she asks._

But the first order had been to keep John safe and to do that Derek would have to keep him.

John tried to speak but Derek cut him off. "She doesn't want you anywhere near that prison. So you won't be."


	7. Kyle

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**Note**: If you're not quite sure who Pilar Ortega is it will become clear soon enough (she's someone you've seen before I promise). In the same vein, the name Pilar Ortega is on loan from the gracious Deslea who coined in in her excellent story "Five Thing that Might have Happened to Chola Chickadee." You can find it here: .com/scc_ I highly recommend checking it out.

**2027**

Kyle stopped walking when the barrel of the gun stopped pressing into his back. He thought they might be in an alcove off the bunker, though he'd sensed rather than seen the doorway. The LED on his escort's headlamp only illuminated a sphere a few feet wide and outside that sphere was utter darkness. "One of Connor's campfire boys come over to chat with you Pilar." The Gun Girl prodded Kyle forward into the light of the other 'Girl's LED.

"I came friendly Ortega, for information, and your sentries took out two of my men," Kyle said into the dark. "March's got a bullet in his shoulder. Dougherty's nose is broken."

"But they'll both live?" A voice inquired out of the dark like the speaker couldn't care much one way or the other.

"They shouldn't have been attacked in the first place. I've got a hundred armed men just west of your perimeter."

Ortega laughed. Other laughs joined hers, mostly female with a few male baritones thrown in. "Threats, Reese? Just like the other one, more balls than brains," Ortega said. "Only on this one that looks about right. Who knew the little brother would grow up to be such a pretty boy?"

Kyle had not expected her to know him on sight. In the past, when they had to deal with Ortega's camp she'd only granted an audience to their Commanding Officer. Until this time around, that had always been Derek. "Middle of the night like this- I could take out a third of your camp before any of yours picked up a weapon." Kyle said ignoring the catcalls that rose up from the dark.

"Maybe you could," Ortega granted, "If your boys didn't go stumbling through my space with lights flashing, sounding like a herd of bulls."

There was the sound of boots setting down lightly on the cement floor. Then Pilar Ortega stepped into the ring of LED light. She was tall enough for a woman but shorter than Kyle and on the wrong side of thirty. The white LED picked out the wrinkles that were just beginning on her face even as it made her long black hair shine, free from any hint of gray.

Like John Connor himself, Ortega dressed like any resistance fighter in odds and ends over bits of body armor. The Gun Girls called her General Ortega but her clothing bore no marks or ornaments to indicate rank. Unlike Connor, Kyle thought he would have been able to pick Pilar Ortega out even if he'd been able to see the other half dozen people in the room as well.

Ortega was unmistakable. There was a sort of perfection to her features. There was a delicate definition to her nose, cheeks, and lips. But her face was so still and expressionless that it looked more like it had been carved from warm brown wood than living flesh. Her eyes darkly defied the brightness of the light and looked down on him where he stood. She was a murderous bitch, the only human John Connor was likely to kill on site, but she looked like a queen. "Where's your big brother, Reese?"

_You should be glad Derek's not here or you might have actually lost a third of your camp, Traitor. _Derek wouldn't have taken kindly to Ortega's hostile greeting. But he also would have known what to say to the unranked General that stood before Kyle. Derek didn't talk much, as a rule, but when he did he always seemed to say something people thought was worth listening to. "That's what I'm here about."

Ortega studied his face for a moment then laughed without humor. "You lost old Sharp Shot Reese? You've got a whole platoon of campfire boys running around after a lost CO, that it?"

"I'm the officer in charge," Kyle said stiffly. "Derek took a company of ten on an Op a few clicks north of here. They were supposed to regroup at '78 post-Op. Any of the 'Girls have ideas about why my brother didn't show?"

Taunts rose from the dark in several languages. Kyle only understood half of them but the gist was that he was a boy whose balls hadn't dropped and that came running to them for help when he didn't have his brother to hide behind.

Ortega turned her head a fraction of inch to the right like she might be about to say something and the sounds fell silent. "They say 'no'." There was no humor on her face, just a raised brow.

"Ask them again." Kyle pulled a cloth bag, once cream-colored now stained all shades of brown, from his fatigues and passed it to Ortega, Killer Chola, traitor extraordinaire.

Ortega didn't look in the bag, just weighed it in her palm. There was enough powder in the bag to torch two Endos. "If it's worth so much I'd have thought Connor would have told you himself."

"What do you mean?"

"Some of my Girls caught Connor and your brother passing through our space two days ago. It was just them and a piece of metal that looked more like a grandfather."

"Caught them." Kyle's fingers reached for the gun that had been taken from him.

"Relax, Reese," Ortega said calmly. "My Girls gave them a warm welcome. Your General wasn't so kind."

Kyle was almost sure that neither Connor nor Derek would kill any of Ortega's soldiers out of hand. If he was wrong, he might not walk out of the camp unscathed, if he walked out at all.

"Your boys didn't stay long. Seems like they were in a hurry to get somewhere." Ortega paused and her mouth curved into a knowing smiling. "Your brother was, what, thirty- something?"

Derek was thirty-two, seven years older than Kyle. But Kyle couldn't see the relevance of the question so he didn't answer.

"Well, if my old buddy Sharp really is out of the picture the Connor camp won't seem quite so _menacing_ as it did before, ay Girls?" More laughs and catcalls sounded from the dark but a frown crossed Ortega's face for a split second before the smile returned. "But it might just be you're yammin' a story at me… get me to let my guard down." Ortega snapped her fingers. "If that's the case, you just let Connor know we won't drop our fists just 'cause he shows us his new boy soldier and tells us a sad tale about Derek Reese. We won't be taken advantage of."

The sound of a dozen or so boots and muffled words came from the bunker outside. When the lights came up, three men and three women came slowly into sight of Kyle's rapidly blinking eyes. Two of the men were hooded and bound hand and foot by lengths of cord. The women and the remaining man held the captives.

One of the women pulled the hoods from the captured soldiers. Peters and Dobson. Kyle knew the men only vaguely, though Dobson, the older of the two, had served under Derek for almost five years. When the woman pulled the gags from between their teeth the men, Peters started protesting loudly. Dobson remained silent.

"Rapists," Ortega declared before Kyle could raise his won protests. "Some of my Girls raided a munitions cache a few weeks back. Your brother sent a unit to take back what the Girls grabbed." One of the guards spat at Dobson's feet. "But not all Derek's boys went for the bullets."

Three women Kyle hadn't seen before stepped into the alcove. Each bore a plasma rifle, identical to Kyle's own, slung over her shoulder. Two of them also bore old bruises on their faces, blots of pale, sickly yellow that darkened to brown at the bottom due to gravity and old blood. Ortega had given the victims the weapons of the men who'd attacked them. It was a small reparation, but Kyle didn't think Ortega was finished yet. "Kunis managed to get a knife in the man who was at her." Ortega nodded at one of the bruised women. "But Alverez and Stockholm are still looking for justice."

Kyle remembered that counter- raid. The officer in charge had reported success and only one casualty. "I'll take my men back to the Connor Camp. Connor will hear of their crimes and punish them accordingly."

"Oh, I know Connor will. What to do with rapers is one of the things the Bastard Boy and I agree on. But I don't know you Reese. How do I know you won't forget on the way?"

"You have my word, Ortega. We'll hear their cases and they'll be punished."

"Your word? What does that mean to me and my Girls who deserve blood?" Ortega's eyes narrowed. "How 'bout I give you _my _word that I'll hear what these boys have to say then I'll punish them fairly, just like I was your own General Boy."

Kyle's vision dimmed and he felt his voice rise in his throat like a growl. "Your word?" He spat out. "What do I want with the word of the bitch who betrayed Sarah Connor? Who murdered her in cold blood? You gave your word you'd keep her safe didn't you?"

Ortega's voice was calm, as if she hadn't heard Kyle's accusations. "Well don't you worry boy, you don't need to take my word. You can watch."

Ortega approached Dobson who swayed on his feet. "You know the claims against you," she said. "Anything to say for yourself."

"Make it quick," Dobson said so softly that Kyle had to strain to hear.

Ortega nodded and the woman holding Dobson led him to the wall of the bunker. When Ortega nodded again they dropped the soldiers arms and cut the bonds at his hands and feet. The shot left Ortega's sidearm with the faintest of sounds. Dobson dropped to the ground with a neat hole between his eyes.

"And you?"

Peters had never stopped struggling against his captors and redoubled his efforts when Dobson slumped to the ground. He addressed his last words to Kyle. "This bitch is crazy, sir. They raid our supplies. Steal from their own kind. I got a woman in camp. Kids." He twisted to look at Dobson's body and when he looked back his eyes were wide with anger and fear. "This ain't justice Reese! This ain't fucking justice!"

The guards didn't cut Peters' bonds and they continued to hold him as he struggled but the shot between his eyes was just as quiet and just as neat.

"You ever find that brother of yours, you tell him the ones who did this aren't the only ones I hold responsible. And this isn't the first time either, by a long shot. I'm sure he knows that." Ortega had been right when she'd said she'd give out the same punishment Connor would. The General didn't take attacks on human beings lightly. Rapists and murderers signed their own execution warrants. Derek had brought men before Connor in the past for similar crimes, and the men hadn't come back. Whether word of the punishments ever made it back to the victims didn't ever seem to be Connor's concern. Kyle understood her. This wasn't just justice, tnhis was a message.

"You go back to your camp Reese and you tell Connor I'll be ready to hear his offers when his men learn to keep their dicks in their pants. Until then, me and mine will take care of our own." Kyle's disbelief must have been on his face. "Yeah, Reese, your General wasn't too nice to my Girls but he had some words for me."

End


End file.
